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Two

“Don’t discharge her.”

Ivan blocked Antonio’s path in the deserted corridor, intercepting him on the way to Anastasia’s room.

His best friend’s turbid eyes clashed with his unwaveringly, in their depths things Ivan had never seen before. Not even during their worst days as The Organization’s captives and mercenaries.

Antonio had always been their brotherhood’s most sangfroid member, at times seeming inhuman in his ability to deal with any level of hardship or abuse with a level head and a cool smile. Even as his closest friend from childhood, who’d seen deeper into him than anyone else ever had, he’d never thought Antonio could feel like this, let alone be unable to hide it. Despondent, desperate, even a little unhinged.

But then what had seemed impossible had happened. Antonio had fallen in love. Violently, irrevocably. And Liliana, the woman who’d created a heart inside him to worship her with—in his friend’s own words—had discovered the truth. That he’d started their relationship as a plot to infiltrate their joint family, to destroy them from within. Liliana now believed he’d never loved her, had only proposed as means to an end. Devastated at the discovery, she’d run away from his efforts to explain...and she’d almost been fatally injured in doing so. After spiraling through ten different kinds of hell as he’d operated on her, too, he’d saved her life. But clearly, not her love. Liliana’s rejection seemed final.

Now Antonio, the surgeon with nerves of steel, was a total mess. Which could actually work to Ivan’s advantage right now.

The old Antonio, whose emotions never played a role in his actions and decisions, would have turned down his demand, since there was no medical merit to it. But Antonio the emotional volcano might sympathize with his plight and do what Ivan wanted.

And what he wanted was to postpone Anastasia rejoining the world, and her family.

Shaking his head, Antonio said, “I have already kept her longer than necessary, to be on the safest side possible. There’s now no medical reason not to let her go back to her life.”

A shiver ran down Ivan’s spine. Antonio’s voice now was the scariest thing he’d ever heard. Such barely contained instability from the most controlled being he’d ever known.

He only hoped dragging Antonio into his own concerns would distract him from dwelling on his regrets and the loss of the woman who’d become his only reason for living.

“Listen, Tonio, I’m eternally grateful for what you’ve done for...Anastasia.” It was still hard to say her name, even to Antonio. He hadn’t told him a thing about her until she’d realized her surgeon didn’t even know her name and provided him with it. “I’m thankful that she has healed enough for you to think she should be discharged—” He grabbed Antonio’s arm when he turned away. “But I’m still demanding you don’t do it.”

Irritation flickered in Antonio’s eyes at Ivan’s detainment. “And you’re not going to give me a reason for your demand?”

Ivan’s fingers dug harder into Antonio’s steel arm in frustration. “My asking it should be reason enough for you.”

Antonio finally took exception to Ivan’s effort to coerce him, prying his hand off his arm with equal vehemence. “It was when you were asking me to help her. I didn’t need to know anything then. I was willing to wait forever for you to tell me why she and her brother were shot or who they are to you. But now you’re asking me to lie to her, to keep her here against her will.”

“Who says it would be against her will?”

“She does. She wants to leave.”

“She wants no such thing. And she certainly said nothing to you. I was there every second you were with her.”

A ghost of the teasing they’d always engaged in from childhood came into Antonio’s gaze. “Yeah, that you were. But I let you sit in during my checkups only as a courtesy to you as my best friend, against my professional and better judgment.” Any hint of that indulgence vanished, and he started moving past him. “So don’t push your luck, Ivan.”

Ivan grabbed both his arms this time. He wasn’t letting him walk away. “I’m pushing more than that, Tonio. You might think she’s ready to leave based on her physical condition, but I know what’s best for her.”

Antonio gave the hands digging into his flesh a disdainful look. “It’s clear your need to keep her here is blinding you to her needs. But I feel her need to leave.”

“You might be an unequaled genius, Tonio, but not even you are omniscient. Hell, you didn’t even suspect what your own lover would feel if she knew the truth.”

The moment the words were out, Ivan could have happily cut off his own tongue. The surge of self-loathing that came into Antonio’s eyes would remain one of his stupidest, cruelest mistakes.

Ivan dropped his hands to his side, exhaled heavily. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

Antonio waved his qualification away. “I did know how she’d feel and that’s why I hid the truth. That was my mistake.”

“I’m not making one. She needs to stay here longer.”

“If you think so, then you’re having a serious judgment malfunction. She may not have asked to be discharged, but I sense she can’t wait to bolt from here.” Before Ivan could flay him with another contradiction, Antonio folded his arms over his white-coated chest. “Let me remind you that your specialty is ending lives, not saving them like me. Including yours, many times as I recall. So I’m the expert here.”

“Not where Anastasia is concerned.”

“Actually, in her case, your verdict is even more suspect, since you’re clearly what I thought was impossible—emotionally involved. Even if it’s in a way I can’t fathom. It makes you even more ineligible to make decisions on her behalf.”

Ivan felt his frustration rising to a suffocating level as his friend’s eyes emptied of all agitation and became ice-cold blue.

Great. In his attempt at taking Antonio’s mind off his estranged lover, he’d only brought out the immovable surgeon in him. To his own detriment.

He exhaled, pissed off at himself, at Antonio and all of existence. “Is this your roundabout way of forcing me to tell you about my involvement with her? You think you’ve found the best leverage to satisfy your curiosity?”

Antonio gave a disgusted shrug. “Right now I couldn’t care less if the whole world, including you, disappeared, ended or even went to hell. But the one thing still functioning about me is my surgeon side.” Yeah, like Ivan had just thought. “Professionally, I am obliged to tell her she’s well enough to go. After that, she can choose to stay longer, or you convince her to stay. But I will tell her the truth. I won’t let you hold her hostage to your own ends and convictions.” Ivan started to protest, but Antonio raised a hand in a gesture of finality. “Either you give me a good enough reason not to discharge her, Ivan, or get out of my way.”

So this was it. The only way Antonio would budge now was if Ivan played his last card. Much as he hated it, he had to tell him everything.

“Fine, I’ll give you the reason.” Feeling as if he was about to jump off a cliff, he inhaled a bolstering breath. “Got something stronger than coffee around here?”

Antonio turned away and started walking back toward his office. “I have medical-grade alcohol.”

He fell into step with him. “Yeah, I forgot for a second there that you don’t drink.”

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t keep my vices around my place of work.”

“Yeah, well, for me to finally tell you what happened in my life before we met, we’ll probably both need something.”

“I have intravenous morphine.” Antonio walked through his door, left Ivan to close it behind them. “Though I probably need sodium pentothal if I want anything approaching the truth. The maximum dose, for an elephant. You’re the most drug-resistant ogre I’ve ever encountered.”

Ivan threw himself on the black leather couch while Antonio sat in his preferred armchair. “Still harping on when you wasted three times the dosage of anesthetic to put me under when you had to pull the shrapnel out of my thigh? I’d told you to do it with me awake. You’re the one who wouldn’t listen.”

“I’ll listen now.” Antonio leaned forward and reached for the carafe on the table, poured one cup of black coffee. Ivan knew it was for him when Antonio added three spoons of sugar, as he knew he took it.

Grumbling that it was a poor substitute for Scotch, he took the cup from Antonio, at once taking a gulp, letting its contents scorch his throat.

Antonio sat back, leveled his gaze on him dispassionately. “So are you going to talk, or are you again going to be the elusive son of a bitch who never told even me anything about your past?”

Ivan snorted. “As if you were any better. You found out everything about your family and kept it to yourself, hatched this moronic vengeance plot that is now costing you the love of your life. If you’d told me, I would have probably saved you from making that catastrophic mistake.”

“Yeah, sure. You would have saved me from myself.”

“As I recall, I did, on a few notable, potentially fatal, incidents.”

Antonio’s frown took on a defensive edge. “I didn’t want to share specifics until I felt I had something worthwhile to share. Besides, it’s different. I didn’t spend the last thirty years hiding the truth about my past from you. I didn’t know anything about it until recently. But you came to The Organization old enough to know everything about yours.”

“Touché.” Ivan’s grunt acknowledged the inequality of their positions. He’d always felt Antonio didn’t like that he kept him, of all people, in the dark. But he’d never pushed.

He was pushing now. And maybe it was just as well. Maybe he needed to purge the poison bottled up in his system. And who better to help him do it but his best friend and the world’s leading healer?

When he didn’t start talking at once, Antonio started to rise. “Seems you do need a shot of sodium pentothal to help loosen that calcified tongue of yours.”

Ivan barked a mirthless laugh at his friend’s threat and gestured for him to settle down. “I’ll talk without a truth serum. But when I do, you’ll end up doing what I demanded. So maybe you should just save yourself listening to the heap of crap that is my life story and just do as I say.”

Antonio sat back, waving nonchalantly. “What’s new? I’ve been taking your crap since I was eleven. Talk already. But whatever you say, there’s no guarantee it’ll change my mind.”

“Oh, it will.”

“No guarantee.”

“All right, fine. Here goes, then.” At Antonio’s encouraging nod, he felt he got a glimpse of his oldest and closest friend again. It made it easier to start. “I was born Konstantin Ivanovich in Russia before the collapse of the Soviet Union.” He paused as understanding flared in Antonio’s eyes. Every member of their brotherhood had explained why he’d adopted his current name, except Ivan. “Yes, that’s why I chose my name. Very predictable.” He inhaled, went on. “During the upheaval leading to the collapse, my father found himself in a dangerous position. He’d inherited his job as a bookkeeper in Russia’s organized crime and he needed out—out of the mob, and of the country. There was one great opportunity where he could take our family to the United States, and it all depended on me.

“I was only twelve, but I had long been recognized as a prodigy of computer programming. My abilities had meant a lot to my father’s bosses. But he said there was this international organization offering children of exceptional abilities a unique opportunity to grow their skills to unprecedented levels, in return for developing the next level of technologies. If I joined them, they would use their influence to send my family to the United States.

“Everything was concluded quickly, and I was proud and eager to go in return for a safe and free life for all of us. My parents assured me I’d join them once I finished my two-year stint with The Organization and they’d established new identities. I soon realized that would never come to pass.”

Like all the boys The Organization took, he’d realized after the first hellish weeks that he was a slave they had no intention of letting go, one they’d turn into a mercenary and lethal weapon.

At first he’d refused to be of any use to them no matter how much they tortured him, hoping they’d let him go. They’d only been too glad to escalate their abuse.

He exchanged a look with Antonio, filled with all the memories of their similar ordeals. “At one point I felt my mind and spirit breaking. I contemplated ending my life...and then you approached me.”

Antonio had been a year younger, had introduced himself as Bones, as they’d been forbidden to use anything but the code names The Organization had given them. Antonio had already been selected for medicine because of his aptitudes—he’d been there since he was four. His friend had imparted on him the wisdom of his years with The Organization, convincing him to play along, so he’d become valued and be given privileges.

Then Antonio had offered him a lifeline. He’d asked him to join the brotherhood he belonged to. It was a group of boys selected and led by Numair, The Organization’s top recruit, the older boy who’d been only known as Phantom then. Their secret brotherhood had become seven members when a year later their youngest member, Rafael, or Numbers, had joined them. The other three had been Raiden, or Lightning, Jakob, or Brainiac...and Cypher. None of them knew what he called himself now.

But when they’d been together, he’d taken their same vow: to become as skilled and knowledgeable as possible, so they’d one day escape, become powerful and wealthy enough to rule their own empires and bring down The Organization.

But meanwhile, they’d been The Organization’s slaves and mercenaries, hired out to the highest bidder to execute any level of atrocities that no one else could: assassinations, sabotages, even starting revolutions, coups and wars.

It had taken over fifteen years to enact their escape plan. After they’d disappeared to build new personas, they’d surfaced to take the business world by storm and built Black Castle Enterprises, each presiding over his own segment of the global empire. Ivan ruled the cyber development world in ways that made his rivals call him Ivan the Terrible.

After they’d become established, and had begun untraceably dismantling The Organization, most of his Black Castle brothers had made finding their families or heritage a priority. Since most had come to The Organization too young to remember much, tracing their roots had been a lifelong endeavor. Ivan, though, knew his family and his brothers and had been certain that with his cyber reach, it would be the easiest thing in the world to find them once again.

But to his brothers’ surprise he’d elected not to contact them. And he’d never told anyone, even Antonio, why.

He told him now. “I never told you this, but joining the brotherhood, and having your friendship, was what saved my sanity. Saved my life. You gave me a reason to live after my family’s desertion made me want to give up.”

A sharp breath expanded Antonio’s chest. “You think...?”

“I know. The people I would have gladly laid my life down for, traded my life for theirs.”

Antonio’s eyes filled with the empathy of the profound connection they’d shared from that first day. “That’s even worse than what my family did to me.”

Antonio’s aristocratic Italian family had thrown him away at birth, discarding their daughter’s illegitimate child from a nobody. The Organization had taken him from the orphanage he’d ended up in. It seemed he considered abandoning a newborn to an unknown fate a lesser crime than giving up a grown son to a definitely hellish one.

Ivan exhaled. “Not that I can’t excuse my parents. We could have all been killed, or worse, and I was their only bargaining chip. They were forced to make a choice between two evils. Sacrificing me was the lesser one. But knowing that rationally and accepting it emotionally was—is—worlds apart.”

“Of course it is. If anyone should exact vengeance, it’s you.” Antonio sat forward, his frown ominous. “I want in on it.”

Ivan waved away Antonio’s aggression. “I don’t want vengeance. Never did. All I wanted was to come to terms. I placed them under surveillance, learned everything about them since they abandoned me. The Organization followed through and set them up in the States with new identities. They’ve since changed those twice more. They’ve managed to completely hide from the Russian mafia, the former soviets and their benefactors at The Organization.”

“But no one can hide from you,” Antonio said, an edge of vicious satisfaction and pride in his voice.

That was indeed Ivan’s specialty. He’d always hunted down the most elusive of quarries.

He nodded. “Since then their lives have been running smoothly and uneventfully. My three younger sisters and brother, who came to America very young, integrated totally. They have successful careers and stable personal lives. My parents, now John and Glenda Evans, have lives that are as respectable, comfortable and secure. It’s as if I never existed to any of them. I live trying to forget them, too.”

“You shouldn’t.” Antonio shredded the words through gritted teeth. “For parents to toss their firstborn to the sharks, to live a prosperous life at the price of his life... No, Ivan, this shouldn’t go unpunished.”

He shook his head. “But it will, Tonio. I don’t have the thirst for retribution like you did.”

Antonio’s fists bunched as he visibly struggled to bring his outrage under control. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

Ivan nodded, his throat tightening at his best friend’s solidarity.

Antonio sat back, the gears of his formidable mind clearly changing. “But what does all this have to do with Anastasia and her brother?”

Ivan sipped his cooling coffee before putting his cup down, buying himself time to rein in the memories of his family and the devastation of their betrayal.

“They come in seven years ago,” he finally said. “After five years out of The Organization’s prison, with only you and our brothers as my sole human connections, I’d resigned myself I’d never have anyone outside of you. Then one day, during the first conference I sponsored, I met a blast from my past. A man I recognized at once as my pre-Organization childhood best friend.

“Alexei Mikhailov left Russia with his parents just days before I was sent to The Organization. It was one of the reasons I was so eager to leave. His parents, prominent scientists in soviet Russia, defected to the States and changed identities, too, becoming the Shepherds. The father, Sergei, became Michael, the mother Ludmila, Grace, and Alexei, who’d followed in his father’s footsteps in the same branch of science in the States, became Alexander, or Alex. But because I’d changed too much...” They’d all made sure they did, so they’d be beyond recognition to their former captors even after they’d erased all evidence of their existence from their databases. “...Alex didn’t recognize me. And I intended he never would. But I was still compelled to get closer. To my delight, even without knowing me, we hit it off all over again, resuming our former rapport as if the intervening years hadn’t happened.”

He paused, savoring the agony of the sweet memories. Then he went on. “Later that same night, I met Anastasia, Alex’s younger sister, whom I remembered as a two-year-old child called Nastya, who used to be my youngest sister’s playmate. She’d been twenty three years old then, and the most stunning creature I’d ever seen.”

And the only woman he’d ever wanted, unstoppably, on sight.

From that first glance, the desire had been mutual and beyond either of them to resist...which they hadn’t.

“For the next few weeks, as Alex and I became close friends again, I plunged into a passionate but secret affair with her.” He leaned forward as echoes of this magical interlude that had never stopped haunting him deluged him again. Body hardening and heart thundering at the mere memories, he raked a hand through his hair, dragged himself back to the bleak reality. “I was overwhelmed by the ecstasy of being with her, not to mention by the delight of being with Alex again. Yet it haunted me that I might expose them to danger if one day the past caught up with me. And though that was my main fear, there was another problem.

“Through the escape and identity changes, not only had their family never lost contact with mine, they’d become like one family. My parents were like a second mother and father to them, with my sisters Anastasia’s best friends and Alex in love with my youngest sister, Katerina, Cathy now. I knew being involved with Anastasia and Alex would bring my family crashing back into my life. My dread was validated when Alex kept trying to suck me into their extended family. It all came to a head when he asked me to be his best man.”

He closed his eyes as memories of Alex, alive and in love and eager for his closeness, tore at him all over again.

His breath left him on a ragged hiss. “I considered putting the past behind me, for his sake, for Anastasia’s. But I couldn’t do it. I was unable to bear the thought of being around my family again. It was the shove I needed to leave them alone. So I told Anastasia and Alex that I had inescapable business on his wedding day and withdrew from both their lives.”

Silence lengthened in the wake of his last words.

Then Antonio asked, “Without explanation?”

He’d driven himself crazy ever since thinking how he could have handled it better. He’d always come to the same conclusion. “Any excuse I invented to explain my withdrawal would have only hurt more than letting them think I was just an unfeeling jerk.”

Antonio inclined his head. “So now you don’t want her going back to her life because you can’t walk away again and you’re worried your family might somehow recognize you when they eventually see you with her? Or are you afraid you’d change your mind about punishing them once you see them again?”

“Neither. The years haven’t lessened my aversion to being anywhere near them, but intensified it. If she goes back to her family, I won’t be able to be there for her anymore. And she still needs my support, my protection. She isn’t ready to face the world without them yet.” He leaned his elbows on his knees. “So now you have the reason you asked for.”

After another beat of silence, Antonio rose to his feet. “I will still discharge her, Ivan.”

Ivan heaved up to his feet, blood shooting to his head. “What? After what I just told you?”

“I actually now believe it’s even more imperative to let her go back to her life.”

“You bastard, you make me spill my guts—”

“Which you should have done ages ago. But what you told me only reinforces what I already decided.” An outstretched arm aborted Ivan’s outraged step forward. “When you first told me you’d be there for her during the hard journey back to her old self, I assumed she had no one else. But she has a family who loves her. She needs to go back to them, to bury her brother, so she’ll get closure and start the healing process. Keeping her isolated with only you hovering over her is keeping her in a limbo of unresolved tension and grief.”

“That’s only your opinion.”

“It’s the truth. And there’s also another reason why I will discharge her against your wishes.”

“Brilliant. You have more bloody reasons to screw me over?”

“You always turn into Richard when you’re frustrated.” Before Ivan could blast him for likening him to that pain-in-the-ass Brit partner and former jailor of theirs, Richard Graves, Antonio sighed. “But yes, I do have another reason. You.”

“Me?”

“Believe it or not, I’m stopping you from making a catastrophic mistake with the woman you care about.” Antonio waited a moment to let his words settle on Ivan before he went on. “No matter how justified you think you are, the day she discovers you kept her away from her loved ones when she most needed them for your own ends, you’ll find yourself in my same position with Liliana, with her feeling manipulated and betrayed, and with you unable to reach her again. And you already have a huge strike against you with her for the way you deserted her in the past. I don’t want you to meet my same fate.”

Ivan almost staggered back under the barrage of truths he hated to hear. “Dammit, Tonio. You were supposed to be too messed up to offer any resistance, let alone come up with a reasoned argument this ironclad.”

“Just your luck I have a separate compartment in my head for my inner Vulcan.” Antonio took him by the shoulders this time. “Let her go, Ivan. And after she’s done what she needs to do, find a way to be there for her, to help her become strong and whole again, while staying out of your family’s range.”

Ivan’s gaze held Antonio’s grim one, aversion and dread bubbling up to the surface. “Do I even have a choice here?”

Antonio’s attempted smile came out as a grimace. “None.”

* * *

Anastasia was sitting by the window overlooking the ocean—the Pacific, since Ivan had mentioned they were somewhere in Los Angeles—when he and Dr. Balducci walked in.

Apart from a couple of nurses and orderlies she’d barely seen, those two had been her only company for the past five weeks. It sometimes felt as if she’d see no one else for the rest of her life except for the two men who’d saved her.

She watched them approaching her, and thought that if the gods came down from Mount Olympus, they wouldn’t look that magnificent. She wondered again how they could look so much alike when one was one hundred percent Russian stock, like her, and the other was pure Italian. Their ethnicities were clear in their bone structure, but in their bodies, vibes and many other intangible things, they seemed to have been forged in the same higher-being manufacturing plant.

They stopped a couple of feet away, where the golden rays of a declining sun shining in through the window made them even more gorgeous. But though she mentally knew they were each other’s equal, it was Ivan who embodied male beauty in her book. Or in her ledger. It felt as if everything that made her a female with these kinds of appreciations was frozen. Even gone.

Dr. Balducci spoke first. “Good news, Anastasia. I’m discharging you. I only ask that you resume your activities gradually and come to me when you can for a checkup. Of course, if you have any unusual symptoms, which I don’t expect in the least, contact me at once. Ivan will provide you with every method to get hold of me day or night.”

She blinked. “You mean...I—I can go?”

“Medically speaking, you’re almost as good as new.”

She hadn’t even been considering her health. It wasn’t what dictated whether she could go back.

Her gaze moved to the other juggernaut towering above her. Ivan’s face was clamped in a disturbing expression.

“Is it okay for me to leave now?” She heard her voice wavering, imploring. “For my family to know...what happened?”

His eyes glittered a deeper green as a beat passed, and felt like an eternity, before he nodded. “Yes.”

And the tears came again. As if they’d never stopped.

In her blurred gaze, she saw Dr. Balducci’s image receding, and Ivan’s hovering a breath away. But he didn’t offer any comfort, just stood there, fists at his sides.

All she wanted was to throw herself at him, seek the shelter of his infinite strength, his encompassing protection. But she held back. She couldn’t need him or lean on him any more than she already had. Ivan, from devastating experience, didn’t stick around, and this time when he eventually left, it wouldn’t be like before.

Seven years ago she’d been young and resilient. She’d suffered an indelible scar when he’d walked away, but she’d survived, even thrived. This time, in her bereft and damaged state, if her dependence deepened even more, she feared she’d be unable to recover.

Finally, feeling too wrecked to shed another tear, she slumped back in her seat limply, looking up at him. His gaze flayed her with its intensity. Yet he still said nothing.

She finally pushed to her feet. “Can I have my things back now, please?” she asked him. “I need them so I can arrange my return to New York. As for—for...”

He took an urgent step forward as she choked, and for a second, she thought he’d take her in his arms. He didn’t.

Looking as if the words were being torn out of him, he said, “Don’t worry about anything. I will deliver you—and Alex—to your family.”